Scott Weiland Remembered

By David de Sola | December 4, 2015 |

Some sad news breaking late last night: ex-Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver lead singer Scott Weiland was found dead on his tour bus in Minnesota. He was 48 years old. He had been touring with a backing band the Wildabouts for the past several months in support of his most recent solo album. In…

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Ben Carson and the Fog of Memory

By David de Sola | November 9, 2015 |

The Huffington Post published this article I wrote over the weekend.  Worth keeping in mind as (I suspect) news organizations devote more resources to confirm or debunk stories he has told about his life over the years.

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Investigative Reporting Goes To The Movies

By David de Sola | November 7, 2015 |

This afternoon, I went to a screening of Spotlight, the new Thomas McCarthy movie about the investigative team at the Boston Globe which broke the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal in 2002, reporting for which the paper ultimately won the Pulitzer Prize. The subject matter is difficult to hear, but the cast and production team …

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PMRC 30

By David de Sola | September 14, 2015 |

Rolling Stone published an interview with Tipper Gore on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the infamous PMRC hearing before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on the subject of explicit subject matter in popular music.  I briefly touched on this subject in my book. A few weeks after the hearing, Layne…

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Facelift 25

By David de Sola | August 22, 2015 |

Facelift was released 25 years ago this week.  There is some discrepancy as to the exact date, though.  Media reports say it was on August 21, but the RIAA database of gold and platinum records has the release date as August 24.  (I ran into this discrepancy while doing research for my book, and ultimately…

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Does My Book Focus On Layne Staley Too Much?

By David de Sola | August 18, 2015 |

Two weeks since its release, a recurring critique I’ve read online about my book is that it is too Layne-centric.  I think it’s a valid point, and thought it would be worth explaining my creative/editorial process for why I wrote it the way that I did. By the time I started working on the book…

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